Grounding Global Justice

"'Globalization.'" The rise of Trumpism has once again galvanized public debate about this highly charged term. This book looks at the last time the concept spurred wide-ranging and unruly agitation: the late twentieth century. In offering a transnational history of the explosive emergence of antiglobalization movements in the United States and Mexico, it considers how farmers, workers, and Indigenous peoples struggled to change the direction of the world economy. They did so by grounding their efforts to confront free-market economic reforms in frontline struggles for economic and racial justice. The story revolves around three popular organizations, and their paths allow us to reinterpret some of the crucial moments, messages, and movements of the era, including the Mexican roots of the idea of food sovereignty, racism and whiteness at the momentous 'Battle of Seattle' protests outside the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings, and the rise of dramatic street demonstrations around the globe"--

In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declared that every human being, without “distinction of any kind,” possesses a set of morally authoritative rights and fundamental freedoms that ought to be socially guaranteed. Since that time, human rights have arguably become the cross-cultural moral concept and evaluative tool to measure the performance—and even legitimacy—of domestic regimes. Yet questions remain that challenge their universal validity and theoretical bases. Some theorists are ”maximalist” in their insistence that human rights must be grounded religiously, while an opposing camp attempts to justify these rights in “minimalist” fashion without any necessary recourse to religion, metaphysics, or essentialism. In Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World, Grace Kao critically examines the strengths and weaknesses of these contending interpretations while also exploring the political liberalism of John Rawls and the Capability Approach as proposed by economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum. By retrieving insights from a variety of approaches, Kao defends an account of human rights that straddles the minimalist–maximalist divide, one that links human rights to a conception of our common humanity and to the notion that ethical realism gives the most satisfying account of our commitment to the equal moral worth of all human beings.

Steering a middle course between cosmopolitanism and a narrow nationalism, the book develops an original theory of global justice that also addresses controversial topics such as immigration and reparations for historic wrongdoing.

Global Justice: The Basics is a straightforward and engaging introduction to the theoretical study and practice of global justice. It examines the key political themes and philosophical debates at the heart of the subject, providing a clear outline of the field and exploring: the history of its development the current state of play its ongoing interdisciplinary development. Using case studies from around the world which illustrate the importance of the debates at the heart of global justice, as well as activist campaigns for global justice, the book examines a wide range of theoretical debates from thinkers worldwide, making it ideal for those seeking a balanced introduction to global justice.

This title was first published in 2000: Part of the academic response to the phenomenon of globalization, this text explores the legal and philosophical implications with particular reference to the problem of international justice. Among the issues examined in the book are those dealing with matters of principle and with the philosophical grounding of international justice: is a moral universalism possible? Are the claims of moral universalism reconcilable with those of moral particularism? What kind of moral universalism does international justice entail? How does the concept of right bear upon international justice? Is justice, both distributive and formal, applicable to international relations? Other issues discussed are of a more specific nature: is there a right to development? What is the role of justice in the resolution of conflict? is humanitarian intervention justified? What are the ethical implications of global warming and acid rain?

This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain.

This book uses three approaches to examine the different ways to conceptualize the problem of global justice and its relationship to trade law, and to international economic law and economic fairness more generally, in view of globalization and the diversity of normative traditions in the world.

What would stoic ethics be like today if stoicism had survived as a systematic approach to ethical theory, if it had coped successfully with the challenges of modern philosophy and experimental science? A New Stoicism proposes an answer to that question, offered from within the stoic tradition but without the metaphysical and psychological assumptions that modern philosophy and science have abandoned. Lawrence Becker argues that a secular version of the stoic ethical project, based on contemporary cosmology and developmental psychology, provides the basis for a sophisticated form of ethical naturalism, in which virtually all the hard doctrines of the ancient Stoics can be clearly restated and defended. Becker argues, in keeping with the ancients, that virtue is one thing, not many; that it, and not happiness, is the proper end of all activity; that it alone is good, all other things being merely rank-ordered relative to each other for the sake of the good; and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Moreover, he rejects the popular caricature of the stoic as a grave figure, emotionally detached and capable mainly of endurance, resignation, and coping with pain. To the contrary, he holds that while stoic sages are able to endure the extremes of human suffering, they do not have to sacrifice joy to have that ability, and he seeks to turn our attention from the familiar, therapeutic part of stoic moral training to a reconsideration of its theoretical foundations.